Countless business owners use Twitter to post short comments about products or services they offer so that followers can view them. Over time, a Web-savvy entrepreneur can develop a substantial following on Twitter, and thus expand his potential customer base. Building a loyal Twitter following takes time and no small amount of effort, so if someone were to hack your account and erase or delete some or all of your followers, the results could affect your bottom line. To ensure that you have a list of your followers, export them a CSV file readable in Excel or other spreadsheet program so you can reconnect with your followers in the event you lose your follower data.

Tweetake

Open your Web browser application, then navigate to the Tweetake website. Click the “Start Here” link on the home page.

Enter your Twitter username and password on the “Authorize Tweetake to use your account?” page. After you enter your Twitter login credentials, click the “Sign In” button. Wait a few seconds for Tweetake to access your Twitter account information and then display the “You have signed in via Twitters as Username” where “Username” is your Twitter account name.

Click the radio button selector next to the “Followers” label (or “Everything” if you want to back up all of your Favorites, Followers, Friends, Direct Messages and Tweets.) Select the “Excel-compatible (UTF-16)," then click the “Get ‘em!” button. Wait a few minutes for Tweetake to retrieve your Twitter data and display a download link for your Twitter data.

Click the “Download” link to download your Twitter data and save it to your computer. Tweetake saves the data in a ZIP folder. Therefore, to open the folder, right click the ZIP file, then click “Extract” or “Extract Here” on the pop-up list.

Simply Measured (Formerly Export.ly)

Navigate to the Simply Measured website. Enter your Twitter account username in the “Enter a Twitter Account to Analyze in Your Free Report” field. Click the “Create Free Report” button, then wait a few seconds for the Simply Measured site to access information from your Twitter account.

Enter your name, email (two times) and business name in the “You’re almost there” window. Click the “Tweet and Generate Report” button. Click “Authorize App” when prompted on the Twitter site. Wait a few seconds for the Simply Measured app to access your Twitter account and display a new confirmation page on the Simply Measured website. The new page confirms that the app generated the report and will email you a download link to the report file at the email address you provided. Depending on the number of followers and tweets in your account, it could take only a few minutes for the Simply Measured site to generate the report and send you the email link, or it might take a few hours. Wait for the message with the download link to appear in your email inbox.

Open your email or webmail client application and open the email you receive from the Simply Measured website. Click the “View Your Report” link in the email message to open a new browser tab or window and view the report for your Twitter account.

Click the “Download to Excel” button at the top of the report window. Download and save the report file to your computer.

About the Author

Jeff Grundy has been writing computer-related articles and tutorials since 1995. Since that time, Grundy has written many guides to using various applications that are published on numerous how-to and tutorial sites. Born and raised in South Georgia, Grundy holds a Master of Science degree in mathematics from the Georgia Institute of Technology.